Keith Urban

Keith Urban Artistfacts

  • October 26, 1967
  • In 2007 Urban filed a lawsuit against a New Jersey painter with the same name over the painter's website. Keith the painter owned www.keithurban.com and Keith the singer owned www.keithurban.net. The singer claimed the other Keith Urban was trying to sell his artwork on his site by using language intended to confuse the public, like, "You have reached the site of Keith Urban. To those who don't know, oil painting is one of my hobbies." The suit wanted the site address transferred to the singer and an injunction barring the painter from operating a site that suggests any relationship between the two. The painter, who had his site registered before the singer, countersued. The lawsuit was settled in the painter's favor, but eventually the singer Keith Urban got the .com domain.
  • As a guitarist, his biggest musical influence is Mark Knopler from Dire Straits. His singing influences include Glen Campbell, James Taylor and Freddie Mercury.
  • He met his wife, actress Nicole Kidman, in Los Angeles at a dinner honoring famous Australians. They are both Australian.
  • Urban married Nicole Kidman on June 25, 2006 at the Cardinal Cerretti Memorial Chapel in Sydney, Australia. He sang "Making Memories of Us" during the ceremony.
  • Though he is known as being an Australian country music singer, Keith Urban was actually born in Whangarei, New Zealand. He moved with his parents to Caboolture, Queensland, Australia when he was teenager.
  • Urban moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1992. He found work as a touring guitarist for Brooks and Dunn, the Dixie Chicks, and Alan Jackson. A long-haired Urban can be seen in the music video for Jackson’s 1993 hit "Mercury Blues."
  • Keith Urban prefers to write down his songs the old fashioned way, with an ink pen.
  • Keith Urban played three shows as a teenager with a heavy metal band called Fractured Mirror. He recalled during his 2018 South By Southwest session "Creation and Connection": "We played Judas Priest and Saxon and Whitesnake and threw in some AC/DC in there, Scorpions. I didn't know anything about that music... I had a Fender Telecaster and a cool little Fender Twin Reverb [amplifier]. They're like, 'That's not gonna fly. You need a Marshall stack.' The singer had one and lent me his and I was in heaven."

    By this stage Urban Urban had discovered the "chicken pickin'" style of Ricky Skaggs guitarist Ray Flacke. "I was obsessed with that," he said. "One night when I was palying with Fractured Mirror, one of the three gigs we did, I busted out a solo and started chicken pickin' through the Marshalls and the band was like, 'What the…?!' and they fired me."
  • Keith Urban likes to relax by getting behind the wheel. He explained: "I've always loved driving, it's such a cathartic thing for me. I love driving all different kinds of things: trucks, cars, big, small, fancy, not fancy. It doesn't matter. It's just very cathartic for me. Some people go skiing for that cathartic thing. Some people run a triathalon. Some people go fishing. I go driving. That's what I do."
  • Speaking in an interview with Marie Claire Australia Nicole Kidman revealed that when Keith Urban needs to blow off some steam he searches the internet for motor vehicles. "I'll know when he's stressed 'cause he's googling cars," she said.

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